Scary scenes abound at a local haunted house that celebrates the spooky season each October with an assortment of gory chills and unsettling frights.
Ozark Nightmares at 22599 Highway 32 is currently open from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays until Nov. 1.
Operator John Benner said the attraction, now in its 19th year, has become a local Halloween time tradition.
“My brother, Joe Benner, and I started the haunted house back in 2006. We had no idea what we were doing,” he said. “We saw that the Jaycees had not been doing their haunted house for a while, and we thought, well, we'll give it a try.
“So in June of 2006, we built a building and finished it on the inside and had it decorated for September of that year, which is crazy to think about now, how we did so much in such a small amount of time, but we got it going.”
He continued. “And the first year it turned out to be so much fun that we just decided to keep going year after year.”
For 2025, the Ozark Nightmares’s spotlight is on scary popular culture.
“This year's theme is media mayhem, so anything from TV, books, movies or video games,” he said. “You'd see things from your favorite movies or at least something similar to things you'd see in the movies: well-decorated sets and really elaborate makeup, some fabulous costumes and some frightfully good scares. Even if you don’t get scared, you’ll at least be entertained.”
Benner said the frightening displays have become more sophisticated over the years.
“The scares of course, have gotten better and the makeup, and the costuming has all gotten better. And our decorations and scenes, of course, when we added the corn maze, a few years after we opened, that opened up a whole new avenue for people to come out and experience a haunted attraction,” he said.
Horror fans will recognize some of the setups.
“You may see some familiar characters from movies like Michael Myers or Jason from the ‘Friday, the 13th’ movies,” he said. “But most all our characters are original designs that our scare actors come up with. They're a creative bunch, and I couldn't do it without them.”
It takes a big crew working together to make the frights and chills happen, he said.
“Besides the characters, of course, we have our concessions people. And people that run the carnival games and entertain folks who aren't actually in the haunted house, they just walk around and entertain people in the commons area,” he said. “But it takes a lot of people to make it happen. I think right now we have close to 30 actors.”
Benner said the haunted house and corn maze will be back to mark a milestone in 2026.
“We'll be here,” he said. “Hopefully, we'll have a big celebration for our 20th anniversary.”
